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Old July 15th, 2017 #1
littlefieldjohn
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2009
Posts: 8,105
Default Former Iraqi General Launches Attempt To Bring Tony Blair To Trial For Illegal Iraq War

Quote:
Former Iraqi army general Abdulwaheed al-Rabbat has launched a High Court suit in London which aims at bringing former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and two senior Jewish members of his government to trial for starting the illegal Iraq War.

Al-Rabbat’s lawyer, Michael Mansfield QC, in his opening argument yesterday said that the Chilcot inquiry’s conclusion that the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary and undermined the United Nations requires the prosecution of Tony Blair, former foreign secretary Jack Straw and the former attorney general Lord Goldsmith.

In calling for a war crimes trial in Britain, Mansfield said that the offence of waging an aggressive war has effectively been assimilated into English law.
Mansfield summarised the Chilcot report’s findings as: “Saddam Hussein did not pose an urgent threat to the UK, intelligence reporting about [Iraqi] weapons of mass destruction was presented with unwarranted certainty, that the war was unnecessary and that the UK undermined the authority of the UN security council.”


“Nothing could be more emphatic than these findings,” he said. “It was an unlawful war.”

Mansfield argued that when the British prosecutor, Sir Hartley Shawcross, opened the cases against Nazi leaders at the Nuremburg war crimes trials at the end of the second world war, he acted as though the crime of aggression had already been assimilated into English law.
An initial application to launch the prosecution was dismissed at Westminster magistrates court on the grounds that Blair enjoys immunity and that the crime of aggression does not exist in English law.

The court was told that attempts to persuade the international criminal court to prosecute to the former Labour prime minister for invading Iraq have made no significant progress.

The crime of aggression was finally defined in 2010 by the ICC, the high court heard, but it has not yet been ratified by a sufficient number of states.
The high court appeal is being heard by the lord chief justice, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, and Mr Justice Ouseley.

The current attorney general, Jeremy Wright QC, has intervened in the case to argue that the crime does not exist in the statute book. “The crime of aggression is not known to English law,” James Eadie QC, for the attorney general, told the court.
He also relied on a 2006 House of Lords ruling, R v Jones, which unanimously found that the international law crime of aggression is not an offence under domestic legislation in the UK.

A number of Iraqi supporters of Rabbat sat at the back of the court. Speaking before the hearing started, Sabah al-Mukhtar, of the Arab Lawyers Network, said: “This is just looking at whether the first court was right in refusing to entertain the case.

“The magistrates court dismissed it on the grounds that Tony Blair had immunity and that the crime of aggression was not part of English law. Many think they were not correct on that.”

Rabbat, a former chief of staff of the Iraqi army, was not in court. He currently lives in the Omani capital, Muscat; he is said not even to own a passport.
His lawyers said he has been able to bring the case in British courts because the UK previously occupied Iraq. Under the European Convention on Human Rights he is therefore deemed to have been within the jurisdiction at a relevant time.

The high court reserved its decision and allowed a further week for Rabbat’s lawyers to make additional specified submissions. If the judges do not dismiss the appeal, the issue of whether the crime of aggression exists in English law will be sent up to the supreme court to decide.
http://www.newobserveronline.com/201...s-attempt.html
 
Old January 2nd, 2022 #2
Stewart Meadows
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Join Date: May 2018
Posts: 37,529
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2 Jan, 2022 23:11 Home World News

Petition to strip Tony Blair of knighthood racks up 300,000 signatures


British Queen Elizabeth’s decision to bestow one of the highest possible honors on Iraq war PM sparked fierce backlash



Tens of thousands of people have signed an online petition calling for the removal of a title of a knight companion from former British PM Tony Blair. The ex-PM “should be held accountable for war crimes” instead, it argues.

More than 318,000 signatures were left under a Change.org petition urging the UK Prime Minister to ask the Queen to rescind the order in less than a day after it was launched.

Angus Scott, the author of the petition, argues that the former British PM “caused irreparable damage to the constitution of the United Kingdom and to the very fabric of the nation’s society,” while he was in power between 1997 and 2007.

The petition specifically accuses Blair of “causing the death of countless innocent, civilian lives and servicemen” by dragging the UK into “various conflicts.”
https://www.rt.com/news/545028-blair...tition-remove/

 
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